


World Crumbling Away.

by CountlessUntruths (KaliCephirot)



Category: Half Life Trilogy - Sally Green
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:50:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4119124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaliCephirot/pseuds/CountlessUntruths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post series: Nathan doesn’t just have nightmares, which are bad enough on their own. Gabriel wants to help him cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	World Crumbling Away.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Azartti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azartti/gifts).



> This was supposed to be a small, smutty hurt/comfort ficlet. Well, it’s neither small, nor smutty, nor a ‘ficlet‘ really, but it is very hurt/comforty.

Promise to hold you close and pray  
Watching the fantasies decay  
Nothing will ever stay the same  
\- Falling Away With You, Muse

The war changed them both. Gabriel knows this, knows that even though he wasn’t that affected by the things he did (because they were for Nathan. As long as it helped keep Nathan safe, Gabriel would have turned himself into the monster everyone thought Nathan was) he still gets, somedays, the unpleasant feeling of nightmares crawling up his back.

Nathan doesn’t just have nightmares, which are bad enough on their own. Nathan also gets night terrors (the nights of the full moon are specially bad for these) and in those Nathan wakes up shaking, crying, convinced that he’s the one who murdered Deborah, his father, his grandmother, convinced that he’s covered in blood, drowning in blood, that he’s being cut in tiny pieces, that he’s being murdered and no-one cares, that he’s being made to kill Gabriel (“don’t let them don’t let them Gabriel don’t let them make me please please please don’t let them make me kill you please please please”) and it usually takes Gabriel almost an hour to calm him when he gets those, holding him to him, whispering that he’s fine, that he’s safe, tha the loves him so much until Nathan stops begging and simply clings to him, shaking and with so much grief that it should be impossible to handle it.

It’s enought o break his heart, over and over, because it’s just a reminder than Nathan is a kind person and most people don’t see that. Most people stay on the scowl and the glaring eyes and the way he curses and they don’t pay attention to the scars that talk of a lifetime being hunted, they don’t see the way Nathan’s hungry eyes open wide when someone, anyone, says something kind about him, how fiercely he cares for those he calls his own.

Nathan is, probably, one of the kindest persons Gabriel has met in his life, but he also happens to be the most abused person he has ever known and it’s nothing but a small wonder that the war didn’t break him completely, didn’t cost him more parts than the ones he did lose, because Celia wanted her Black Witch monster, wanted a merciless assassin instead of the seventeen years old boy who had only ever wanted to be left alone.

(The only reason he’s glad, these days, that Celia lived to see the end of the war and is part of the new Witch Council, is because it means that she makes sure people are not hunting Nathan anymore).

The nights when Nathan, actually, manages to fall asleep after one of the terrors chased him awake, Gabriel tends to stay up, Nathan curled against him, face against his chest as if hiding, and Gabriel hums lullabies his mother used to sing, combs his fingers through Nathan’s hair and wishes for a way to keep the nightmares away.

**

He hesitates on not going when he sees Nathan, sweating, sleeves rolled over, cutting wood for the fire. During the day, Nathan seems to be getting better, eyes brighter, smile a soft little thing that doesn’t disappear quite so fast these days, his laughter coming also more easily because the solitude of their cabin and the woods and the lake are making him thrive. Here, Nathan curses and yells and laughs and they push each other and tumble around and they play like the teenagers that they, technically, still are. And it’s a good day, one of the days that Gabriel thinks, could make him pretend a little longer.

But Gabriel, who knows him better than anyone, can see the shadows hanging inside his eyes, and from what little he knows about psychology, he knows that these things, if left alone, tend to get worse rather than better.

He waits until Nathan’s done with the ax, then calls.

“I’m going to the city, Nathan, you need anything?”

“The city?” Nathan frowns, wiping his forehead with his arm. “What for?”

“One of the books I got was a two parter and I didn’t realize that. You know how I get when I’m left in a cliffhanger,” he offers with a smile.

Nathan rolls his eyes, but his smile. “Impossible, you mean. Want me to go with you?”

Gabriel shakes his head. “It’s fine, I can’t promise I’ll be quick.” And while Nathan wouldn’t complain, he handles electronics much worse than Gabriel does. He can be in a city for most of a day and only end up with a mild headache. Nathan, usually, ends up with migraines if they stay there for more than three hours.

Nathan comes to him and kisses him softly, rough, warm hands on his hips. Gabriel sighs, drapes his arms over his shoulder and has to test his resolve because Nathan looks so good like this and he’s so warm and–

“Anything, then?” He whispers, smiling.

Nathan shrugs, his smile a soft thing against his mouth, just for him. Gabriel can feel Nathan’s thumbs rubbing his hips over his jeans. “Come home soon.”

*

Gabriel is a good sorta-almost-practically-really brother-in-law and he waits up until after Arran is done kissing his very cute friend goodbye at his University before he goes to him.

“A Halfy, right? She’s cute,” he grins at Arrans surprise. “Are we due to having lunch so you can tell Nathan?”

Arran startles over and half glares at him. Gabriel had thought, back before he met Marcus, that Nathan’s glares came from his father, but neither Mercury nor Marcus had been much for glaring, which came, he guesses, from being so ridiculously powerful that you could simply intimidate someone by being yourself. After meeting Arran, he had realized that it must have come from Nathan’s mother side of the family, because Arran glared exactly the same way (if much less mightily) than his little brother did.

Gabriel puts his most charming smile, the one that promises that butter wouldn’t met in his mouth, before Arran sighs and gives him a small smile, shaking his head.

“Not quite yet, but… maybe in a few weeks,” Arran concedes, before he frowns, worried. “Is everything alright? Where’s Nathan?”

“It’s fine, it’s… too long to discuss it over the street. Would you have some time, perhaps? We can go for lunch, my treat.”

Arran raises an eyebrow but he doesn’t say much about that part, because of course Nathan knows that, technically, it’s a tourist’s treat. But really, there aren’t, many honest ways for a Black Witch with his talents to make money: he translates some books and manuscripts, Nathan hunts and they sell the skins or meat they don’t need. And if sometimes the budget is a little tight, well, tourists should just learn to be more careful.

But Arran IS all the things that Nathan thought his brother was: good and kind and gentle and completely non-judging, perhaps out of having had Nathan as a little brother. Arran doesn’t judge Black Witches for being Black, acceptes Blacks and Whites on what they do, not which side of the fence their blood alignments fell.

“Okay. I’ve to be back by three, ‘tho,” Arran offers with a smile.

Gabriel? He’d been brought Black, and he still finds himself sometimes uneasy, near Arran. Which he knows is stupid and something he would never, EVER admit to either Arran nor Nathan,so he just widens his smile and lets Arran guide them to a small cafe nearby.

Arran is unsurprised as he tells him about Nathan’s nightmares and his sometimes absent behaviour, all of Nathan hiding deep inside himself sometimes for hours at a time.

“I don’t suppose that 'talking to a therapist’ is an option, right?” Arran mutters, but Gabriel doesn’t answer because, one, it wasn’t really a question and two, in the case it was, really, now. “So, your idea is…”

“There must be something I can do to help, if even to cope a little better,” Gabriel shrugs. “I know that eventually, the ideal thing would be for him to talk with someone who actually has an idea of what they’re doing. But who knows if Nathan will ever be ready for that.”

“The Council really did manage to ruin that talking to strangers things, didn’t they,” Arran sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “But Gabriel, you can’t be both his boyfriend and caretaker. It’ll burn you out.”

“I know, and I’m not trying to. But there must be some things that we can do, together?”

Arran looks at him for a moment and Gabriel thinks that the desperation might be clear on his face because he sighs again. “Let me make some calls.”

**

“Gabriel, you already had like ten books pending to read,” Nathan deadpans.

Gabriel gives him his most charming smile as he piles his new books. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“Next time, I’m going with you to stop you, obviously you can’t be left alone to your own devices,” Nathan says, hands on his hips again. Gabriel leaves the books on the table, drapes his arms around Nathan’s neck.

“Missed me that much, didn’t you.”

“Nope, not at all,” Nathan says, looking up before closing the distance between them and kissing him. Gabriel sighs against his mouth and kisses back, and with the books there he allows himself to forget about the matter at hand just then, focusing much more on Nathan’s lips and hands and the wonderful way his hands feel as they start taking off his clothes.

At least then.

For the most part, the books repeat what Arran had said about therapy and talking about things and a lot of things that Gabriel knows make sense, but nothing much about what to do when someone had been so used by people in position of power over you that there was little to no chance of trusting them, ever. Yes, the books speak of how to build trust between therapist and patient, but the one time that Gabriel had suggested, Nathan, that they find someone, Nathan had closed off and said no and Gabriel can’t blame him.

So Gabriel focuses on the breathing exercises, learning the hows, the whens, what to say, what not to say, or in the visualization exercises, the little things that the books said that the family of the 'patient’ can do to help when a crisis hit.

And, sometimes, it does work. Most of the times, even, if he got it right, he could manage to get Nathan to breathe again, to relax and even, sometimes, Nathan talks to him about his fears in a soft, rough voice that sometimes shook with self hate and fear and those Gabriel can’t do much about, doesn’t know how besides telling Nathan, over and over, how much he loves him, how he’s not alone anymore and Nathan answers with a soft, gruff 'I know, me too’. But it does help, most of the time, and that’s all that matters to Gabriel.

And then, of course, it’s when it happens to him.

**

He dreams of Michèle. It’s a wonderful dream– he goes to visit Florida (not home, because his home is wherever Nathan is) but he and Nathan go to Florida and his father is there and Michèle is there and he gets to have his darling little sister meet the love of his life, his precious Michèle smiling and laughing, so alive and happy and Gabriel feels so, so happy and so desperately sad because everything in his dream is perfect and he knows it’s a dream and his heart is breaking, breaking faster than it can heal and he doesn’t know what’ll happen then and–

“Gabriel!”

He wakes up with a start, pushes Nathan away so he can breathe and it’s not happening– he can’t breathe, he’s chocking, did his sister feel like this, before her neck snapped? Did it even snap, or did she die because she couldn’t breathe, did she desperately try to breathe again over and over and–

Nathan puts a hand on his stomach, the other on his neck, looking at him in the eyes.

“Exhale slowly,” Nathan says– orders, really, his fingers tight in the nape of his neck. Gabriel breathes out slowly, feels his lungs trapped in iron, burning, can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe… “Now, inhale. We’re doing it together.”

He follows Nathan, breathing in at the same time as he does– his lungs release the iron burning them, and then Nathan tells him to breathe out again, still slowly, little by little until the burning stops and Gabriel stills feels himself trembling a little, but the nightmare (that perfect, perfect dream) is gone.

“Okay?” Nathan asks, concern in his dark eyes, in his expression. He’s still holding the nape of his neck, the other one still on his stomach, rubbing gently.

Gabriel shudders a sigh, aware that he feels his eyelashes wet. He was crying.

“Yeah,” he manages, tries a little smile. “Sorry.”

Nathan snorts, pushing his forehead against his. “Don’t be an idiot, you’re always saying I don’t have to apologize for my nightmares.”

“You don’t.”

“You don’t either.”

Gabriel would try to tell him it’s not the same, but he feels to exhausted, his skin too raw, as if it had been scrubbed by sand, his sense of preservation not quite there yet. Nathan moves– takes his hands away and Gabriel would try to cling, but Nathan is simply moving to hold him, making them a tangle, one of his legs beneath Gabriel’s raised ones, the other one behind his back so he can hold him closer, so to Gabriel is almost impossible to know when one starts, one begins, as he wraps his arms around Nathan, nuzzles against his neck, taking a deep breath of the scent of wet earth-and-forest-and-just-Nathan, the place he calls home these days.

“The breathing exercises,” he starts, once his brain has calmed enough to stop feeling like it was being destroyed, realizing what Nathan just did.

Nathan shrugs a little. “You think I’ve not noticed?”

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing for trying to help me,” Nathan mutters. “But I’ll accept the apologies for not telling me about them.”

“I just didn’t want you to feel like I was trying to… I don’t know. Control you, or that you were fucked up.”

“I am fucked up beyond reason, have been for a long while, probably will be for the rest of my life,” Nathan says, not sounding particularly angry, more like simply accepting it. Gabriel’s heart hurts for him and he makes an unhappy sound. Nathan rubs his side, gently. “But you’re not controling me, Gabriel, that’s stupid. You’re just helping me put some order on that fuckedupness so we can live with it, right?”

“Right,” he concedes, to tired to argue. He feels Nathan tense for a moment and he wonders what he said, or if it’s something Nathan will simply not say, one of the thousand of thoughts that are too tangled for him to form just then.

“You should let me do the same, Gabriel,” Nathan does say, and it sounds like something he’s been thinking for a long time. “You don’t talk about you, almost never. You just shut down and try to ignore it or fix it on your own and that’s fine, but. You’re shutting me out, too. You should let me help you, too.”

And for a moment Gabriel is angry and he wants to lash out, feels the cold seeping inside him, ready to cut and tell Nathan since when, push him away and keep a tight hold of his pain and bruises and push them inside where it belongs… but the moment he thinks it, the moment when the words have all but taken shape and are ready to be shot he realizes that it’s not like that. That yes, Nathan honestly isn’t very empathic, either because of the abuse he suffered or simply because that’s who he is, but with the people he calls his own he goes beyond what he knows or understands about feelings and thoughts, ready to go out of his comfort zone for them. Knows that even before they were a thing, even before Annalise’s betrayal, when Nathan wasn’t his, Nathan would have done anything in his power to sooth his pain, that Nathan had willingly died, inside their shared dreams, for him to be a Witch again.

And with that comes the added thought that… it’s true. Nathan shares his thoughts with him, his fears and hopes. Sometimes he has to help untangle them, because Nathan spent so many years unable to say anything that, even know, his tongue tangles around what he wants, what he fears, and Gabriel takes advantage of knowing him so well to help him with words that Nathan might be missing.

And he… he doesn’t. Michèle knew him and would pound him for him to open up and it was then that he did– not always, they had enough fights about that, but Gabriel always promised himself that if he ever fell in love with someone, he wouldn’t be like his parents, with their screams and anger… and so he moved to the complete other side, it seems, and now that he sees it that way, he’s not sure it’s not as bad.

Trust, one of the books said, works both ways. A give and take. And Nathan, whose trust cost more than diamonds, trusts him with his demons, with the part of him that he hates, that wishes weren’t there.

And Gabriel…

“… I dreamed of Michèle,” he says instead, voice soft, half hidden against Nathan’s neck, where his words won’t be lost, won’t be taken away.

He waits for a moment, heart aching, not knowing what to expect. He feels Nathan nod a bit, tightening his arms around him.

“Tell me about her?” Nathan asks, his voice just as soft.

So Gabriel does.


End file.
